


All That Stupid Old Shit Like Letters And Sodas

by ladderax (allnuthatchforest)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Bad Sex, First Kiss, Kissing, M/M, One Night Stands, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-20
Updated: 2011-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:03:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allnuthatchforest/pseuds/ladderax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for <a href="http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/19177.html?thread=43642089#t43642089"> this prompt </a> at Inception Kinkmeme. Arthur loves kissing. Really, really loves it. But none of his unsatisfying one-night stands have ever given him what he wants. And he'll never, ever ask for it.<br/>Eames, meanwhile, is trying to figure out what, if anything, Arthur might want.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That Stupid Old Shit Like Letters And Sodas

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Fuck and Run" by Liz Phair.

_Arthur isn’t just gonna come right out and ask for it. He doesn’t beg._

_He sits on the bed while the guy takes off his shoes and leans back, looks at the tacky wall art and the cracks in the plaster, and tries not to sigh too audibly. Maybe this time it’ll be different, he thinks. Shouldn’t jump to any conclusions._

_The guy—it might be telling that Arthur, who is usually so good with names, doesn’t even remember what his name is—turns and looks back at Arthur with a leaden expression._

_“You ready to do this, huh?” the guy says flatly._

_“Yeah, of course,” says Arthur._

_The guy kneels gracelessly in front of Arthur, starts unbuttoning Arthur’s pants and yanks them down over his thighs. It might also be telling that, while Guy was undoing his shoes (a man over thirty wearing dirty skateboard shoes, Arthur thinks, and judges him just a smidgen) Arthur unbuttoned his pants, but dawdled in pulling the zipper down._

_“Mmm, can’t wait to suck on some dick right now,” the guy says, looking up at Arthur and grinning._

_Arthur drops his head back onto his shoulder. Right. So it’s not even anyone’s dick, not his dick, just_ some dick, _some common sheep-grazing field anyone can kneel right down and gnaw on._

 _Also, he doesn’t quite like the phrase_ suck on _, which makes it sound like an inanimate, possibly baby-related object. Or the word_ dick, _for that matter._

_It’s not that he’s always doing some careful textual analysis of the language used by his motel fucks, but this is really getting on his nerves right now. His analytical brain, he thinks, hasn’t been turned off. And Arthur knows exactly what it will take to turn off that constant commentary, that troubleshooting and nitpicking._

_But he will never, ever ask for it._

 

//

 

Eames is doing it again, and he can’t really stop himself.

He’s good—excellent, actually—at not staring at Arthur when Arthur is looking at him, but as soon as Arthur goes back to poring over the thick contents of the manila folder in his hands, Eames’s eyes magnetically snap back to him. He touchlessly limns his body, traces the line of buttons on his shirt from his collar to his belt buckle, like a subway map with a lot of delicious stops. He imagines unbuttoning each of those buttons, pressing Arthur gently back into the headboard (or chair back or floor or backseat of a car—he isn’t picky) and trying his damnedest to multitask between kissing the ever living fuck out of Arthur’s slick pink lips and unpicking each of those lovely nacre buttons to see and touch and breathe in the smooth, flushed, heartbeat-juddered skin beneath them.

But Eames doesn’t like to pick a fight he doesn’t think he can win; he’s a cautious man, and he knows his skill set, and he doesn’t go in for overly big risks. And, as much as he hates to admit it, Arthur’s kind of a big risk. He’s never seen Arthur go home with anybody, never heard Arthur joke about sex or get too drunk and lean a little too close. For all he knows, Arthur—if sex is even his thing at all, and if it isn’t, that’s cool—is absolutely no fun at all in bed. Eames imagines the worst-case scenario—him leaning in to kiss Arthur gently, tracing down his bare spine teasingly with a single index finger, and Arthur fixing him with a withering glance, saying “Mr. Eames, I appreciate that you want to practice your seduction skills, but will you just put your dick in me already and give me what we both came here for?”

Eames could easily see that happening. He looks over at Arthur again, at the death grip he has on his expensive rollerball pen (the only kind of pen Arthur could ever even touch without a pained expression on his face) and the intense way he’s speed-reading his documents, right hand trailing rapidly over the page (touching the page makes it easier for the brain to process written words, he’d explained once, with that smug little smile that Eames wanted to absolutely demolish with his own lips) rolling his eyes every so often at the text. Arthur likes speed and efficiency. He gets impatient easily. Would he ever waste his time with a trivial time-drain like kissing and talking dirty?

Yeah. No thanks.

After an hour or so of looking at the files in utter silence (how can anyone sit slouched in a chair with their feet up on a sidetable and still look that stiff?) Arthur finally gets up to go to the bathroom, giving Eames a chance to look at that unreasonably pert arse that Arthur never seems to use for anything but sitting. And he stays in there for awhile. Eames isn’t usually the type to pry in situations like that, but he kind of has to take a piss.

It’s probably kind of a bad idea, but he walks over to the bathroom door quietly—he’s a seasoned thief, he’s good at being silent—and leans in closely. He doesn’t hear any of the usual bathroom sounds. Maybe he’s reading on the toilet. Eames was shocked to find that Arthur actually did that, thought he’d find it unsanitary and repulsive, but sure enough there was a copy of _Civil Engineering_ magazine addressed to Arthur Camilleri on the back of the toilet yesterday afternoon.

 _Well, for God’s sake, Civil Engineering must be really exciting this month,_ Eames thinks wryly, considering the little sighs Arthur’s making in there.

 _Oh, I really shouldn’t be listening in, if he’s doing_ that, Eames thinks, but then he hears an unmistakable little _Ohh_ come out of Arthur, and that doesn’t seem to have much to do with either bridge pylons or insoluble fiber.

He strains his hearing, and hears rustling and shifting, and yet another high, muffled _Mmmm_. It sounds almost plaintive, almost yearning, and Eames’s chest aches for a stupid second. _Everyone sounds kind of bizarrely sweet when they wank, don’t they?_

Well, not really. But Arthur’s wank behavior didn’t mean anything about what he wanted in bed. He could’ve been thinking about pylons after all.

*

Arthur isn’t usually big on jacking off in hotel rooms when he was there to plan a job with other people who were right outside.

But he's hard. Painfully fucking hard.

He's thinking himself down from it, tried remembering that joke of a sexual encounter he’d had the past week with a guy who had given him an awkward, thrusty blowjob, then stood up, slapped a condom on himself and tried to push Arthur’s knees against his chest. That wasn’t wise. Arthur had pushed back, pushed the guy off him, sprung up, and said, “I have an early meeting. Thank you for your time. Please make sure you take all your clothes with you.”

But every time he imagines that guy’s scrawny face and goatee, it turns into Eames’s, and Eames’s silvery eyes are looking up at him with a rascally glint, and Eames licks the tip of his cock sensually before taking it into his mouth and stroking all around it with his tongue as if he were kissing. Arthur fidgets, mostly to get a better feel for the bare muscular shoulders that are coming into galvanizing contact with his almost unbearably sensitive inner thighs. And he feels Eames hum happily in response, feels the hum right on his cock as he presses his tongue gingerly to the slit and uses it to lap up Arthur’s precum.

Then there's a knock on the door.

“Arthur, everything allright in there? I’m sure Civil Engineering is fascinating and everything, and you can have your den back in one moment, I swear, but I have to take a bit of a piss.”

Oh god.

He hastily pulls his pants back on and makes quite sure to zip up his fly, then he re-buttons his shirt. Yeah, he’s been stroking his own chest. And touching his own lips. What of it?

As they pass he tries to give Eames a completely neutral, unfazed look in response to the other man’s slightly impish smile. Well, so what if Eames knows he was masturbating. He doesn't know what he was masturbating about. Getting off is a common human need, like drinking or pissing or checking the Fantasy Football scores, regardless of whether or not it has an object. It doesn't just go away when your coworker--your gorgeous, muscular, clever-tongued coworker, with his perpetually smooth flushed lips that look like they've always just been kissing or rubbing against skin--is in the other room. It just doesn't.

He almost makes some comment about appreciating it if Eames would not comment on his bathroom habits, anything about them, but he doesn’t. He isn’t in the mood for snark.

He picks up his file a bit aggressively, sits back down, and sticks a pen in his mouth—needs somewhere to channel this tense, frustrated energy he has, and the pen’s pretty much his best bet.

He’s so focused that he almost doesn’t hear Eames talking to him.

“Arthur,” he’s saying.

“What is it?”

Eames pauses, takes a breath, puts his hands on his thighs, and then curls them, digging his nails loosely into his palms. He looks antsy, like he’s trying to figure out the best way to say something difficult or possibly offensive, or something about how Eames has just discovered that this particular mark has a very nasty system of booby traps in his underground bunker in Switzerland and kidnapping him will require at least one person to sacrifice him- or herself so that the others can get through. Not that this mark has an underground bunker—he’s a candymaker and a rival wants his trade secrets, and Eames hasn’t been able to stop making sly _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ jokes (which Arthur secretly thinks is fucking adorable, but can’t ever really tell him.) That’s just the kind of look that Eames happens to have.

Arthur steels himself for the worst.

“There’s no easy way to put this, Arthur,” he asks gently, “but is there anything I can help you with?”

“Anything you can help me with?” Arthur almost laughs out of nervousness, trying to suppress it for fear Eames will interpret it as patronizing. “Kind of you to ask, but I work best when I just take care of my part alone. I’m just trying to figure out where he’s most likely to go in Tucson on the night of the 25th.“ He softens his tone. “I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Eames said. “God, I sound like a bloody creep. But, uh, I wanted to know if…if you ever wanted someone to…help you relieve a little tension?”

 

*

 

“To help me…relieve a little tension,” Arthur ponders. “What. Do I seem like a cow who needs to be milked or I’ll explode? No thanks, Eames, that isn’t part of your job description,” he says coldly, then grabs his file.

 _Excellent choice of words, Eddie, old boy,_ Eames thinks.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he coaxes.

“I can’t even begin to think how you meant it. The way I see it, you a couple of quick in-and-out fucks with someone who’s a known quantity and understands your lifestyle and won’t get too attached. You want to relieve your own tension, not mine.”

“That was a really, really poor choice of words.”

Arthur rises stiffly, fiddling with the file, standing like he was about to walk out the door.

“No shit.”

“Arthur—“ Eames stands up and walks over to him, grasping his wrist lightly.

“Don’t touch me. I don’t want you, OK?”

Eames moves back, throws his hands in the air.  
.  
“Fine. But you know what? You don’t sound like someone who doesn’t want me.”

“I’m sorry if I didn’t knock you out, then. I’ll try to be more unambiguous in the future.”

“What if I said I didn’t want a quick in-and-out fuck?”

Arthur looks quizzically at him, but Eames thinks—is almost sure—that he can detect the faintest trace of a smile.

“Well, I’m not ready for a civil partnership, Eames, if that’s what you mean. But—am I understanding you correctly when you say that you want to do slightly more than mount me like a racehorse?”

“Arthur,” Eames chuckles, I want to do a lot more than mount you like a racehorse. I want to do this.” He moves in closer to Arthur again, lifts his chin gently with his hand, and presses his lips to Arthur’s. The contact is thrilling, Arthur’s lips slightly dry and chapped and pleasantly scratchy from the recycled hotel air. He moves his lips back and forth against Arthur’s softly, just wanting to make a tentative survey of their texture and breadth like that before he goes any deeper.

There’s shock in Arthur’s eyes, before it softens into something else. He looks stunned, humbled, curious. His breathing is slightly labored. Eames isn’t sure whose heart he’d felt pounding when their chests had briefly touched.  
“And this.” He looks down at Arthur’s open mouth longingly before honing in on just the upper lip, suckling it, tracing his tongue over the delicate skin at the outermost edge, learning with his mouth that shape that always reminded him of the masterfully lathed, arched waist of a violin.

He runs his tongue under Arthur’s upper lip then, the sensitive underside stroking Arthur’s smooth white teeth. Arthur sighs, and Eames can’t help it—his hands glide firmly across the other man’s back, rubbing, comforting, stimulating, drawing him close.

“God, I want you,” Arthur groans, tilting his neck back to look Eames in the eye but not withdrawing from his arms at all.

“I think you might be able to have me,” Eames murmurs sweetly. “You might. I can’t make any promises, though.”

“Shut up,” Arthur says, grinning, and crushes his lips against Eames’s. Their mouths are lined up perfectly now, interlocking. He feels Arthur’s tongue enter, and taps it shyly from underneath with his own. Their tongues stroke each other. The negotiation of tongues is so incredibly sexy, he thinks--trying to remain in contact but not conflict, trying to slide alongside and over each other at exactly the right times. The awkwardness, the bumping, the weird spaces and positions one can end up in, that makes it intimate. It might be too intimate in some situations. But not with this particular man.

Right now, he's aware, he's actually touching the tip of his tongue to the place where Arthur receives the sweetness of the sugar in his coffee. And it's overwhelming to share that space, to be let in.

When Arthur opens his mouth still wider, tongue still licking assertively into Eames’s own, Eames closes his lips around his tongue. He sucks with the gentlest of pressure, amazed at its simultaneous soft-and-hardness, the brilliant mechanics of the muscle and all it can do—civil engineering be damned—and careful to keep his teeth well out of the way, he feels Arthur’s breathing speed up, harsher, raspier.

 _There are places other than the mouth to kiss,_ he admits reluctantly, and migrates to the side of Arthur’s mouth, then where his cheek meets his chin, then his jaw, pressing warm, open-mouthed kisses to the soft skin there.

To his surprise, Arthur practically whines. He puts his hand to Eames’s cheek and guides their lips back together, where he melts into another deep kiss.

“You really like kissing, don’t you,” Eames whispers, amused and tender.

Arthur seems embarrassed.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You could do it all day, couldn’t you,” he murmurs, taking Arthur’s bottom lip between his, sucking. “You think about it when you wank. I bet,” he says, punctuating his speech with a closed-mouth kiss a good several beats long, “you touch your own lips when you wank, too. ”

Arthur looks dazed now, and so unsettled that he looks like he’s tempted to pull away. But he looks back up at Eames instead, moves his arms from his sides where his hands had grasped Eames’s upper arms, and wraps them around his neck. "How did you guess?"

“Because.” He kisses the side of Arthur’s mouth. “I do it too.”

“Mmm?” Arthur’s crooked half smile at that moment is adorable, and so he kisses it. There are an awful lot of reasons to kiss Arthur, he’s beginning to realize.

“I want you to show me what you think about when you wank,” Eames whispers in Arthur’s ear. “I want to do all of it.”

“Just keep doing what you’re already doing,” Arthur replies throatily. “This is good. This is really, really fucking good.”

“Shall we take this to the couch?”

“God, yes,” Arthur’s tongue is reaching into Eames’s mouth to tickle the ridges of his hard palate. “How—how long do you think you’d be able to kiss me?” he asks shyly.

Eames grins. He worms away from Arthur’s arms for a moment, unhooks his watch, and tosses it lightly onto one of the leather chairs.

“Well, I don’t seem to be able to keep track of time anymore, Arthur,” he says, snaking his arms around Arthur’s waist again. “So you with your excellent organizational skills will just have to let me know when you feel it’s time to stop. “

"That won't be for awhile," says Arthur.

"Oh. Good."


End file.
